


search the world for something else

by somehowunbroken



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Gen, POV Second Person, Recovery, Self-Medication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3895771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Your name is Jack Zimmermann, and you were born into hockey.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	search the world for something else

**Author's Note:**

> things i swore i'd never write: anything like this fic  
> things i have now written: this fic exactly.
> 
> warnings: jack's canonical drug and alcohol abuse. unhealthy teenaged relationships. anxiety fuelling both of those things.  
>  **please note: this fic is heavily about anxiety and pro sports and self-medication, and how that combination fucks people up.** i would definitely consider it triggering, so if that's something that might trigger you, please, please, skip this one.  <3.
> 
> content notes: second person POV! oddly-framed dialogue! not a strict interpretation of canon parse, but not one that's totally out of thin air. goes AU at the end of jack's major junior career (also known as: he doesn't OD, he gets drafted, there's no samwell). i have no idea. i asked people to talk me out of this. only one (1) person even tried, and she was far too late to actually stop me. you've been warned.  
> title from tswift's "wonderland." i don't have a jack/parse song, but if i did, it'd probably be that one.

Your name is Jack Zimmermann, and you were born into hockey.

It's always been something people joked with you about: your father, of course, and the easy way you applied the word _uncle_ to men like Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr. You didn't even know they were legends until a hockey camp when you were six, all the other kids wide-eyed as you asked your coach why there was a huge picture of Uncle Mario on the wall, as he fumbled with the answer. _Because - because he's Mario Lemieux,_ he'd finally said. _He's a big deal, Jack. A really big deal._

_Oh_ , you'd thought. Your eyes had scanned around the room, taking in all the pictures of guys you knew, your dad's friends, and your brain flipped through other rinks you'd been in, all the smiling faces you'd known looking down at you from the walls.

It was the first time you'd ever felt like they were watching you intently. Like they weren't smiling down at you because they were happy. Like they might start frowning if you weren't as good as they thought you were.

You never really got the feeling to go away, after that.

You played in league after league: atom, peewee, bantam, all the way up to major juniors. You hadn't slept for more than a couple of hours a night in the three weeks leading up to the call from the Remparts asking you to join them. You thought you'd be able to breathe better after you signed the paperwork. You were wrong.

_Jack,_ Maman had said after you put the package in the mail, when you started making a list of what you'd need to take with you, as you started worrying about who you'd billet with, if they'd be a good family or if they'd just be in it because of your name. You weren't sure which would be better. _Jack, if this isn't what you want…_

It is. It's all you've ever wanted. You don't know how to want anything else.

You end up with a good billet family; they take care of your meals and your laundry and don't complain about the odd hours you keep. Nobody in the house pesters you about being Jack Zimmermann. You figure it's the very best you could've hoped for. You try to relax. You almost manage it.

The only time you ever really feel like everything's going how it should is when you're on the ice. Skate, pass, check, shoot; you run the drills like they're the only thing keeping you grounded. They night be. You don't know how to tell anymore, and you're too afraid of not giving your all to hockey to see what would happen if you maybe took it easy out there.

_Give the other kids a shot, Zimms,_ you hear over and over again, and it's - Parse, you think, might be the only person who understands, who gets what the building pressure in your chest feels like, who might not laugh it off if you let it slip that hockey is the greatest thing in your life but also the thing you're most afraid of. You're both at the top of your respective games but you're better together, somehow. You've seen the way the skin around his eyes tightens when he's the one to mess something up, though, and you know that expression from the inside.

You try to spill it out one night, finally back at the hotel after the third away game in four days, sitting with your back against the headboard and the only light spilling out of the bathroom, choking on thoughts that won't translate into words outside of your head. _Sometimes,_ you get out, and _I can't_ and _I don't really know_ and finally _I think if I didn't have hockey I might,_ but you can't finish anything, can't chase the words around in your mind, can't force anything out into the open, and Parse--

Parse climbs off his own bed, shoves at your shoulder until you uncurl a little, scoot over, and then he climbs right in bed with you and makes sure you're pressed up right against each other, arms and hips and thighs, the knob of his ankle knocking painfully into yours. _I know,_ he says, voice low, right in your ear. His hand is warm on your arm, and all you can do is stare as he squeezes. _I know, Zimms. Jack. Jackie-boy, I get it, it's hockey, it's--_ and then he breaks off, his hand painfully tight around your forearm, and you take maybe your first deep breath in years.

You sit next to each other for a while, maybe an hour, and then Parse gets up and disappears into the bathroom. When he comes back out there's an orange bottle in his hand, and you'd known he's been taking something but had never asked what, but when he shakes something tiny and white out and offers it to you, you hold your hand out for it. You stare at it for a minute, two, while Parse puts the bottle back from wherever he'd gotten it. He brings a glass of tepid tap water with him when he returns, and he settles back in next to you before offering it to you.

_It helps,_ he says. _With the head stuff. And it's legit, so don't worry about that._

You take the glass and you take the pill and you don't feel any better. But then--

Then you take another one the next night, right when Prase takes his, and the night after, and when you get back home he shows up to practice and presses a bottle into your hand when he pulls you in for a back slap in the locker room, and after a few weeks, you do. You feel -- not fixed, you don't think, but then you never really thought of yourself as broken. But you feel like you can breathe a little easier, like smiling is something you haven't actually forgotten.

_Thank you,_ you say to Parse after practice the day after you notice. _Parse._ You're not sure what else to say, how to get it across to him.

He just smiles at you, and you return it. He smiles even wider to see it.

You start going out with the team after games, between practices and training and calling home every few nights. Parse is there; so are the others, but none of the others smile at you and press a beer into your hand and a palm to the back of your neck, none of them smile at you and sprawl across your legs, none of them smile at you and tilt their heads back and laugh at the jokes you make that even you know are stilted at best. Parse, though, Parse curls his fingers into your shirt and holds on as he slides farther and farther into your lap. And the others notice, of course they do, but Parse tilts his beer bottle at them and smirks and knocks back a sip, and you do the same, and they mutter and move on.

It's -- it's better, so much better to take your pill (pills, two and then three, sometimes, before the big games, it's okay, it's fine) and to knock down a beer (two, three tops, never four, not four, until it's sometimes four, but that's fine, it's all great) and to grin at Parse. It's better. You're better.

_Come on, Jackie-boy,_ Parse says, quiet like the mite coaches are with the ones who forget how to skate in the middle of the rink, like your dad had been when you'd dashed too far out onto the pond when you were five and had sworn the ice was cracking under your feet. _You need? I've got more, there's always ways to get more, there's other stuff, stronger stuff--_

You don't want, but maybe -- maybe you need. Maybe--

You put your hand on top of Parse's, link your fingers through his and force his fingers to squeeze at the back of your neck until you can breathe again. _Just,_ you say, and he keeps his fingers locked tightly around the steel beam of tension that your neck has become even when your fingers go lax.

He curls up around you when you manage to collapse into bed, puts his body between you and the door, the rest of the world, and you push your face into the hollow between his chin and the pillow and force your eyes closed.

Parse introduces you to his doctor, the one for the pills, and you've never met a doctor like him -- he has a prescription pad and he gives you a business card, but you're all loitering in the cereal aisle of the Metro, and he hums and pulls something out of his pocket for you when you finish describing your problems to a box of rice puffs. _Be careful with them,_ he warns, and you nod and clutch the bottle as he pushes his cart down the aisle and disappears towards frozen foods.

_You're good, Jackie-boy,_ Parse promises when you take one of the new pills, slightly bigger, longer, rounded at the edges. _C'mere, c'mon, you're good, you're great._

And you are, you are, and you're better together, on and off the ice. Your spare time is all Parse's time, and his is yours, and your parents love this boy who's brought your smiles back, and you -- you do too, is the thing, and Parse smiles when you kiss his forehead, grabs your hand and your cheek and says _I think you missed,_ and you're just so much better together that it's never even a question that you're right together in every way.

You play and you play and you win, keep winning. And then you're hoisting the Memorial Cup, you're throwing your head back and laughing as Parse puts his arm around your neck and plants a smacking, obnoxious kiss on your cheek in front of your parents and your teammates and the television crew, but it's lost in your teammates' shouts, their jubilation as you skate around and whoop and cry, a little. There are interviews and parties and it's a haze, really, a time loop that you can't really track, whisked from one thing to another, the media buzz and the alcohol and the doctor giving you another bottle when you call him up, no questions asked.

And then -- you're home and it's quiet, the clamor settling for a moment between the Cup and the draft, and you find yourself in your room with the bottle in one hand and the phone in the other and that terrible, familiar feeling crawling up your spine, compressing around your lungs, settling low in your stomach. Parse's face is on your screen, smirking up at you as you stare down, and your finger hovers over the call button but can't press it, can't call, can't keep putting your burdens on him, the only person who's ever put up with it, with you, the only person who's helped--

Your phone rings, jerks in your hand, and you jam the answer button and listen as Parse rambles at you, talks about the draft, talks you down, down, down.

You swallow a pill dry when he tells you to. You lay on the floor and put the phone beside your head and listen. You sleep.

Draft day is big and bright, everything you were told it would be; Parse is there, grinning at you and whispering _Vegas, baby_ every time you pass each other. It's not set in stone; nothing is, not yet, but everyone knows it's just formalities at this point. You sit with your parents and your agent, and when the Aces call your name, first out of the box, you smile like you mean it and you hug everyone and you catch Parse's eyes and he's smiling, he's whooping like you won the Cup again, and you smile back at him, fix it on your face as you walk for the stage.

You're an Ace. You did it, you made it, and you watch from backstage as Parse goes second to the Falconers, and you're so, so happy for him, so proud, but it's 4300 kilometers from Las Vegas to Providence and the low-level panic that's been bubbling around the edges, seeping into your life since you and Parse hoisted the Cup is threatening to spill over.

There's a waiter with a tray of champagne flutes. You take one and don't down it in one sip only because your mother is watching. It helps you hang on until Parse makes his way backstage and you can sling an arm around his shoulders and grin into the new baseball cap he's wearing, Falconers' logo above the brim.

Everything's hazy and soft around the edges after that, the interviews and the packing and the moving, prospect camp and training camp and preseason. The only constant you have is Parse's voice in your ear, Parse telling you to take your meds, he's taking his, _keep your head up, Jackie-boy, we're doing this, we've got this,_ and by the time you notice the crack in his voice you're already hanging up the phone two nights before your season opener. You make a note, a real note, written down on a piece of paper that you leave beside your alarm clock, to ask him, to make sure he's okay.

You wake up blearily, your phone ringing and ringing, and Maman is crying in your ear when you pick it up, _Jack, oh Jack, have you heard--_

They use the word _overdose_ and the word _alcoholism_ and the word _rehab_ but all you can see is Parse's face on the television, the picture from draft day, the grin that you now see is pulled too tight, the way his eyes pinch at the corners. It occurs to you for the first time in years that Parse knew what you were trying to tell him that night in the hotel because he was dealing with the same thing, and you feel the guilt settle down on your shoulders, heavy and tight and constricting.

You have practice. You have a skate that isn't optional, and you make it to the rink in time to throw up in the trainer's office, and he hands you a Gatorade with a sympathetic face while he sends one of the staffers to talk to Coach. He doesn't ask you anything, not a word, just lets you heave into a trash can and spit out half-formed thoughts, and when you finally raise your head and look at him, he's looking right back at you.

_You are not Kent Parson,_ he says firmly. _Your story, Jack, it doesn't have to go the same way, but you have to want to change it._

You didn't tell him -- anything, you don't think, but then you don't have to say the words for people to hear them, to see them in the way your hands shake and the sweat beads at your temples and your breathing catches.

You just nod and stumble out, and when morning skate is over you gear up and head out onto the ice and shoot pucks at the net until your hands feel steady, and you keep going until they shake again.

The trainers don't say anything, and you don't say anything, and you play in your first game and then your second, your fifth and you get your first assist, your tenth and you get your first goal. You skate and you play and you call the rehab, sometimes, but they don't let you talk to Parse and his parents have nothing to say to you, to this part of their son who succeeded where the part they love fell down. You don't know what to say to them, either, so you keep going, keep pushing, skate and score and play until your knuckles are cracking inside your gloves from how tightly you're holding your stick, until you miss the playoffs but win the Calder, until you find yourself in the trainer's office after you've packed up your locker. You sit and you sit and you sit, and he finally asks, _Well?_

You put the bottle of pills on his desk with shaking fingers, push it across to him until he puts his hand on yours, stops the progress, and you look up at him. _Is that everything,_ he asks, not looking at the bottle, not looking at what you're giving him but still asking for more, and he's--

_Yes,_ you say, and it's the truth, it is, but it's also not. _No,_ you add, and he just nods and takes the bottle and calls for one of the team doctors, and they promise you, they promise they'll help, that they can.

Parse's face flashes through your head, changing, the boy you knew and the man in the rehab across the country and the stolen moments in between, every time he'd promised you the same and you'd thought you could manage, every time you'd held on too tightly and hadn't realised he'd been clutching right back. He still won't take your calls. The Falconers had quietly let his contract run out without offering a renewal. You haven't spoken to him in eight months. You don't know what to do about it.

You don't know what to do about anything.

_We will help you,_ the doctors and the trainers and the whole Aces organisation promise you. _You're not the only one,_ your coach adds, and you stop, look at him blearily, because of course you are and of course you aren't, but he holds your gaze steadily and repeats _you're not_ firmly and you start to believe it.

The summer is long and awful, talking and talking and new medication and everything being regulated, and you reach for your phone more often than you reach for a beer but you don't do anything with either, can't, feel like you've lost the rights to one and the self-control for the other, aren't sure which is which anymore. It does get better, though, and you remember this, the coming out the other side, the way things hadn't been better overnight but they'd gotten manageable. And talking helps, talking to someone who knows how to talk back, how to get you to think about things, it's more of a help than whispering to Parse in the night had ever been even as it's worse than that had ever been, too. You feel guilty for it, but you talk about that, too.

You make it back to training camp and you make the team again, and at the home opener the announcer calls each player's name as they skate out onto the ice, and you smile when he yells _your Calder Trophy winner, the next king of the Aces, Jack Zimmermann,_ and it's not forced.

You win that night. You go home, you pick up your phone, and you call Parse.

He answers.

You talk, and you listen, and he tells you about so, so much that you knew or you guessed at, and when he's done, you promise that you're talking and listening now, too, and that you're here for talking and listening, and you think--

You think, somehow, that you've made it through okay. That you're going to continue to.

And you smile as you hang up the phone.

**Author's Note:**

> i am very aware that this fic is constructed weirdly. this was purposeful, and you were warned. i always love comments on my work, but if your only comment is to tell me my fic is constructed weirdly... i am aware. thanks though.
> 
> [follow me on tumblr](http://somehowunbroken.tumblr.com) for lots of hockey crying, both real life and fictional. the hockey, not the crying. that's all too real.


End file.
